PARIS, _November, 1842_.
M. de Montrond says that we should beware of our first impulses,
because they are usually trustworthy. One would suppose that you had
given much consideration to this beautiful maxim, for you practise it
with rare constancy. When a good resolution occurs to you, you postpone
it indefinitely. If I were at Civita Vecchia I should seek among the
gems of my good friend Bucci for some Etruscan Minerva; it would be the
most appropriate seal for you. Meanwhile, my potter is all ready, and I
still say, like Leonidas: Μολὡν λαβἑ. I think I shall keep it for some
time still, until the eve of your departure.
I must tell you that I am feeling much better, and am less a prey to the
blue devils. I find pleasure even in my work, which I have not done for
a long time. I am forming great plans for the winter, which is a sign of
better spirits. This is why I write so cheerfully, for if I had written
immediately after receiving your German letter I should have criticised
your faults in my most severe style. You will not be deprived of this
even now, because if I see the world to-day through rose-coloured
glasses, that is all the more reason why they will soon reflect a darker
hue.
I should be glad to know what you are doing, and how you occupy your
time. When I see you so learned in Greek and in German, I conclude that
you are very lonely at ..., and that you are spending your life among
your books, with some wise professors to explain them to you. Yet I
wonder whether it is not otherwise in Paris, and I fancy the days there
passed in amusements of another kind. If I had not lived so long in the
strictest solitude, I should know all about your actions and movements,
and the reports that I should hear would give me an impression of you
very unlike the one I receive from your letters.
While you love to praise yourself, it pleases me to believe that you are
more natural with me, by which I mean less insincere, than you are in
society. There are in you so many contradictions that I am terribly
puzzled to reach an exact conclusion; that is to say, to the sum total +
so many good qualities, -- so many bad ones = _x_. It is this _x_ that I
find confusing.
When I saw you at the home of our friend Madame V., just as you were
leaving Paris, your extreme elegance and style astonished me greatly.
The cakes that you devour so hungrily, after the fatigue of the opera,
have astonished me still more. Not that I do not place love of
admiration and epicureanism among the chief of your faults, but I
supposed that these faults had a mental rather than a tangible form; I
imagined that you cared very little for dress, and that eating was to
you only a diversion; that you enjoyed making an impression by your
beautiful eyes and your clever sayings, rather than by your gowns. See
how mistaken I was!
But this time you shall not reproach me with pessimism, for while you
have been falling from grace day by day, I fancy that I have improved.
It is unreasonably late and I have abandoned a highly learned company
of Greeks and Romans to write to you.
I am just reminded that I must rise early to-morrow--that is,
to-day--which prevents me from explaining in what way I am better than I
used to be, while you have been amusing yourself teasing me about
Madame.... I will defer my own praises for another time; besides, I have
come to the end of my paper.